Government cuts

The impact of the government’s 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review will fall disproportionately on women, finds two independent reports on the gender impact of the changes. The first report, by the Women’s Budget Group, analyses the overall impact of the tax, benefit and public spending changes in the government’s 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and finds that the cuts represent a reversal in progress made towards gender equality. The second report, a broad brush analysis by the House of Commons library, finds that nearly three-quarters of the cost of the main personal direct tax and benefit measures in the budget is being paid by women.

The government has consistently argued that under the government spending review those with the broadest backs would take the heaviest burden – that the package would conform to the principle of 'progressive austerity'. However, two independent studies, the first by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the second by Tim Horton and Howard Reed for the TUC, challenge this assessment, finding that the overall impact of the spending review is regressive.

The government's plans, as announced in the 2010 spending review, involve a number of tax rises – especially the rise in VAT to 20 per cent from January 2011 – and an £81 billion package of spending cuts.[1] These are needed, the Coalition argues, to close the fiscal deficit inherited from Labour.

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PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.